Dragon's Nemesis (The Dragon Corps Book 7)

by Natalie Grey

  And pretty much the last one Talon expected.

  “Hello,” Aryn said. When Talon’s brow furrowed, she gave a wry smile. “You were expecting Cade.”

  “I, uh….” His voice broke and slid. He nodded. “Yeah.”

  “You might want to talk to him, too,” Aryn said, “but Tera came to me, and I think maybe … well, maybe I have something to say that will help. Because we talked about this, too, she and I—on Valentia.”

  Talon’s eyebrows went up. This, he had not known. Tera had taken him, Cade, and Aryn to the resort planet for a vacation after her father’s trial. Apparently, she and Aryn hadn’t just been joking around while they had drinks by the beach—they’d been discussing weightier matters as well.

  “I’ll tell you the same thing I told her,” Aryn said. “I’m glad there are people like you. I tried to be a soldier because Ymir needed soldiers in the resistance, but I was terrible at it. It wasn’t because I had any more morals than you, though. I just wasn’t suited to it. I really couldn’t do the things that needed to be done.”

  “Aryn.” Talon shook his head. “When you needed to stand up for people you loved—”

  “It’s not a contest.” She shook her head. “You don’t have to tell me that I didn’t fail. I did fail at being a soldier. If we’d had a planet full of people like me, there wouldn’t have been any resistance for you to team up with. And if there weren’t any Dragons, we’d still be slaves and the Warlord would still be in power.” She considered. “And there’d probably be more people like him.”

  “Like me,” Talon said bluntly. “People who do things without regret.”

  She shook her head. She wasn’t surprised by what he said, but she didn’t accept it in the slightest.

  “Not at all like you, Talon. The things you do, you do because of your sense of morality. The things they do … they’re just out for themselves. They’re selfish and cruel and they find ways to justify it.”

  “So that’s what it hinges on?” Talon gave a rough laugh. His voice was shakier than he wanted it to be. “My sense of right and wrong. That’s a damned thin knife edge, Aryn.”

  “It’s not.” The depth of certainty in her voice surprised him. “Talon, that one thing makes all the difference. Trust me.”

  He stared at her bleakly. He wanted to. He wanted to trust her on that—but his mind whispered that this was just a salve to his conscience.

  “Are you going to fuck up sometimes?” Aryn asked him. “Yeah. All of us do. I fucked up when I didn’t do some of the things you wouldn’t even have thought twice about. Talon, people died because I wasn’t a good enough soldier.”

  “People died because I am a good soldier. The people on the Blood Moon.” And others. If he started to count them all, he wouldn’t be able to stop.

  “I know.” Aryn met his eyes. “But all the stuff you told Cade about why you did it? It’s true. And we need people like you. People who say, ‘I know you stacked the deck so someone innocent has to die, but I’m not going to play your game. I’ll sacrifice the one person—or however many—if it means I can save more.’” She shook her head. “Don’t you see?”

  “I don’t even regret it, though.” Talon shook his head. “And I should. They’re whole lives. I should care more than I do.”

  Aryn paused. “I guess I don’t see what purpose that would serve,” she said at last. “It’s a miserable way to be. Sometimes regret is useful, I guess. But in your line of work—well, you’re the last resort. You don’t go in guns blazing because someone left the wrong change in the till or built a foot over their neighbor’s property line. The people you’re dealing with aren’t exactly normal. You can’t afford to be, either.”

  Talon managed a small smile.

  “I guess what I’m saying,” Aryn explained, “is that if the world was full of all yous or all mes, we’d be in some pretty bad straits. It’s good we have both.”

  Talon looked down at his hands now, but something had eased inside him. When he looked up, he wasn’t sure he could thank her without his voice shaking—but he knew from her expression that he didn’t need to say the words. She knew.

  She gnawed on a thumbnail and sighed. “Okay, but one more thing.”

  “…Yes?” He mistrusted that tone.

  “I also a little something about living somewhere that you could get tortured and killed for stepping out of line or standing up for what was right.” Her shoulders were hunched nervously.

  Talon groaned. He did not—he absolutely did not—want to think of Dess right now. Dess, and Tersi defending her, talking round in circles as if to excuse the fact of what Dess had done.

  His face must have settled into a forbidding frown, because he realized Aryn was looking more than a little worried. He sighed. “Sorry. I know. She thought we knew.”

  “I don’t know what I would have done to save my sister,” Aryn offered. “Or Samara, any of them. But I think I’d have done at least what she did—made a bargain with myself, said I’d tell you all everything just as soon as I’d saved whoever I needed to save. I’d tell myself that it wouldn’t come back to bite anyone. That sort of thing. You get really good at rationalizing what you do when you’re living like that. She’s probably spent her whole life feeling guilty for that sort of thing, you know? Every time she does something that helps Ghost, she knows she bought herself another day … and she also feels guilty.”

  Talon sighed at her. He didn’t want to feel bad for Dess, and now he did.

  “We looked her up, you know.” Aryn gave a small smile. “You wouldn’t believe how many times she’s done this. Apparently, hostage-taking is very common in the smuggling business. Also, they do this whole pseodo-feudal arranged marriages thing—not important, just weird. Anyway, Dess has bargained for a lot of kids. And wives. And a donkey, at one point? I have no idea.”

  Talon choked on a laugh. When he looked up, Aryn was smiling impishly and he wondered if she’d made that up just to make him smile.

  “The point is—” she began.

  “I know.” Talon rubbed at his head. “Ohhhh, I wish I hadn’t yelled at her. I hate apologizing.”

  “Did you really yell?”

  “Not really. But I wasn’t very nice.”

  “You don’t say,” Aryn said drily. “Well, go make amends. No one likes apologizing, you know.” She caught sight of his expression. “What?”

  “You said she’s good at this,” Talon said.

  Aryn nodded.

  “But how good is she going to be when she knows that it’s basically Rhea or her brother?” Talon asked brutally. “When she’s negotiating with her own aunt, who knows all the family secrets, who she’s used to placating?”

  Aryn said nothing, but suddenly she didn’t look quite so sure of herself.

  “Exactly,” Talon said.

  “Maybe that’s not the question to ask,” Tera said suddenly. She peeked around the edge of the screen.

  “Have you been there the whole time?”

  “No. I just came back to see how things were going.” She perched on the arm of Aryn’s chair. “I was going to say, though, instead of asking if she can or can’t do it, now that she’s negotiating with Ghost … why not ask what you can do to help her? What we can do,” she corrected herself. “How do we structure all of this to give her a fighting chance?”

  Talon’s computer beeped again and he peered at a message that popped up in the corner.

  “I’d better figure that out,” he said slowly. “Because it’s crunch time, apparently.”

  “What?” Tera frowned. At her side, Aryn was suddenly on alert.

  “You’ll want to go talk to Lesedi,” Talon told them. “She just sent me a message. John Hugo has received a demand—sort of. Someone named Regina Samuels wants to negotiate. In person. With Dess.”

  “Talon, she can do it.” Aryn looked determined. “I stood up to Ellian. She can do this. Tell her—” She broke off. “Tell her to do the things she’s always known s
he should do. Tell her that little voice that tells her it’s stupid to knuckle under, stupid to play along? She needs to listen to that voice now.”

  Talon nodded after a moment. “I will. Thank you.” To Tera, he echoed the words. “Thank you.” He meant so much more than that, but they knew each other well—her smile said she knew everything he wanted to say. She touched her fingers to her lips and held them out to the screen, smiling, and then they cut the call and Talon headed for the bridge.

  First he’d give the coordinates to Jester.

  Then—he sighed—he’d go find Dess and tell her what Aryn had said.

  He stopped to consider. It was, perhaps, the right move for him to go apologize to Dess—but was it really something that would help her in the negotiation? He didn’t think it was. Aryn’s advice might be useful, but he had a feeling that it shouldn’t appear to come from him. The more he thought about it, he didn’t think it should come from Tersi, either.

  That was a puzzle. He’d think about it while he got the coordinates laid in.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  “SHE’S ORDERED IT. She must have.” John Hugo had no doubt in his voice as he settled back in his chair. “She’s pulling them back to Eternas … for some reason.”

  The names listed on the screen, the members of the large, extended Samuels clan that had begun to disappear, were simply too numerous to be explained either by coincidence or murder. Many of them would not even have had to disappear in order to lie low—they could have gone to the resort planets, villas, and estates they owned.

  Instead, there were reports coming in now that they were gone entirely. Government officials had requested extended leave and disappeared, whole syndicates had dissipated and then reformed in the violent way that signaled a power vacuum, and—the more one looked—even lower-level family members were vanishing.

  He wondered idly if any of them had been surprised by the summons. If they were so distant from Ghost that they had no idea of Eternas at all, or if perhaps they’d heard of it, but always assumed it was a family fiction instead of a truth.

  They were in for a rude shock when they arrived. He wished he knew what exactly that shock would entail, however.

  He looked over to Lesedi, who was sitting straight-backed in one of his living room chairs. Her eyes were fixed on the screen, considering, and then she looked over at him. He wondered how she always managed to look so composed. In the days after Rhea’s disappearance, he had given up entirely on changing, showering, or eating.

  He’d only pulled himself together today because he knew he would see her. It was hard to imagine her ever being as sloppy as he had been.

  Much to his surprise, showering and changing—as well as eating the meal Lesedi’s bodyguard had made for him—had done wonders. Hugo was filled with purpose now, and with hope. He felt Rhea’s absence every moment, but he now believed her recovery was possible.

  And he had regained his drive to see Ghost not just robbed of this particular victory, but entirely defeated.

  “It’s quite a puzzle, isn’t it?” he asked Lesedi. “She must assume that we’d know about Eternas soon—we have the Taspers, after all.”

  She gave him a pointed look. She’d been dancing around the topic, and though he had a ready answer for her, he wasn’t sure she would quite understand his perspective on the matter.

  “If she does assume that, my guess is that she thinks we’ll know about it some other way,” Lesedi said, after a moment’s thought. “The Taspers didn’t tell you about it, and that would have been a useless gesture on their part unless she knew about it; they were willing enough to tell you other things.” She considered. “It’s really two questions, isn’t it? Does she think we’ll find Eternas, that’s first, and second, what is her plan for the family? They’ve prospered immensely by having both their own planet, and one foot in the known world, so to speak. Pulling them back now is both noteworthy and not in line with their other actions over the years.”

  Hugo met her eyes. “She thinks something big is going to happen soon.”

  Lesedi gave a grim nod. “And the question is … will she be orchestrating that, or not? Of course, I’ve no doubt we’ll get some clue of it when Dess meets with … who was it, Regina?”

  Hugo gave her a look. “You’ve never forgotten a name in your life.”

  Lesedi gave a small smile.

  “You’ve learned to pretend you don’t know so much,” Hugo guessed. “That you don’t remember so much. It makes people uncomfortable.”

  Lesedi shot him a bemused look, as if surprised to hear it spoken aloud, and Hugo gave a small shrug. He knew because he had been the same way all of his life. Once he was told a fact, he remembered it—and in many cases, that unsettled people. Like Lesedi, he had become adept at making it seem like he was searching his memory for facts.

  Lesedi hesitated now, however. “You’re sure we can trust Dess?”

  “Yes.”

  She only looked at him. When she arrived, she had told him about the meeting she had—hearing Dess describe her life on Eternas, receiving Aegis’s rundown of their later discussion, and more. Hugo, jaded by a life filled with defectors and spies, had been unsurprised to hear of this. In fact, he’d thought of it not long after Lesedi showed him Eternas.

  Under normal circumstances, he would have called Dess here at once to demand an explanation. These were not normal circumstances, however, and he’d known the explanation in any case—they’d been bargaining for her brother. They’d been open with Hugo from the start that Harry hadn’t gotten out.

  It had been a warning, plain as day to anyone who knew about these things, that they would do what they had to do to get him back. Hugo had understood that, even if the Dragons and Lesedi had not. He’d simply felt a sense of satisfaction to learn of Eternas—that was what it was, that was what they were holding back.

  But Hugo knew that Lesedi, at least, was unsure of Dess’s allegiance.

  “Dess is someone who has a keen sense of right and wrong,” he said finally.

  “A sense she has learned to disregard,” Lesedi retorted crisply.

  “She’s aware of that. I’ve spoken with her myself several times, you know. I didn’t call her on a whim.” He allowed annoyance to touch his voice. “I called her because she is one of the few who has a chance of getting Rhea back.” His voice trembled slightly on the last words, which he hated.

  Lesedi hesitated. “Forgive me,” she said finally. “I do not wish to speak of unpleasant things, but it is essential that we send the best possible person to negotiate. We should assume we will get only one shot at this.”

  “I am assuming it,” Hugo said shortly. “Who would know more about Ghost than Dess? Who has done more hostage negotiations than Dess? She is exceedingly competent.”

  “She is.” Lesedi’s tone matched his in annoyance. “She is also aware that she must choose between her brother and Rhea. She knows that the Dragons are likely to use her as a distraction while they get Rhea back by other means, and she knows that her aid will likely cost Harry’s life.”

  “I am well aware that—”

  “Not only that—” her voice rose over his “—Ghost has known her since she was a child. What Dess knows of her is that Ghost is all-powerful, that her family could not stand against her. Think of your parents. They ruled your world, didn’t they? And she grew up knowing that even her parents could not save her from Ghost, while Ghost grew up knowing her every quirk. There will be informants now who are telling her Dess’s every little secret and personal failing. This is not a level playing field.”

  “Do you think I’m unaware of that?”

  “I think you’re not acting as if you’re aware of it.” Lesedi’s fingers clenched slightly on the arms of her chair. “You’re speaking of knowledge, experience, a sense of honor. These are not things that will save Dess in this negotiation. Too many structural weaknesses and—”

  “Humans are not bridges.” Hugo stared her down. “Ho
w many informants do you think I have seen in my day?”

  She said nothing, watching him closely.

  “I’ve seen a great many,” Hugo said. “There are those who come to save their own lives. There are those who come because they want to protect their ill-gotten gains—who are simply there because they have always known how to game the system, and they know that being an informant is their best move. I’ve seen a lot of informants turn on Intelligence. Some were surprises. But after a while, you begin to notice the character of a person.”

  “Some were surprises,” she repeated.

  “Yes. Some were.” He met her eyes. “You have great faith in the Dragons, do you not?”

  “Yes.” Her tone said that she knew this was a trap.

  “Are Dragons what they are because of their strength or their knowledge? No. You know that. They are what they are because of their character. Strength, speed, stamina, mental acuity, reasoning, planning—these are skills they hone, not the measure of them as people.”

  “Dragons are tested. Dess has not been.”

  “I trust her,” Hugo said. “I trust her to do what she needs to do, when push comes to shove.”

  “You trust her to put your family over hers,” Lesedi pressed.

  “In this case, yes.” He met her eyes and saw that he would not be able to convince her. “That will be all, Ms. Diaho. I will call for you if I need you.”

  Anger flared in her eyes, and he repented of the words immediately. She was not his employee, to be summoned and dismissed at will. She was one of the only people who could save Rhea—and it would, indeed, be impossible without her.

  He opened his mouth to apologize, but she moved quickly. She was already almost gone, and when she turned back to give him one last look, it was enough to silence him completely. There was anger there, and annoyance.

  And above all, there was a warning: I hope you know what you’re doing.

  For the first time, John Hugo felt a stab of doubt.

  CHAPTER TWENTY